Location: Minnesota
TLDR: My employer attempted to access my families personal health records without permission.
I work for a very large hospital system in Minnesota. it recently came to my attention through two different coworkers, that at some point, when I left early one night, the on-duty lead was looking through EPIC for either my wife or daughter.
I believe this is related to a night last October where our 2 month old was developing a cough and I left to get her from my parents and possibly take her to the hospital. She ended being fine, I think she just swallowed some milk wrong, but regardless, we took her in that morning to be seen by a family friend at a clinic that is not apart of the health system I work for. That day, the employee in question, had texted me off duty on Snapchat asking if I was calling out again that night, at the time, I complained to leadership about being contacted off duty and the feeling that I was being pressured into calling out. At that time I was unaware of him looking for health records.
I have notified my management of this, but I'm very conflicted on what I should do. I have raised concerns about privacy and confidentiality for our employees in the past (multiple emails, well documented). If it was just me, I don't know if I would be nearly as mad, still wrong, but this is my daughter or possibly my wife and that really irks me. It's huge invasion of privacy as both patients and an employee. My concern is, because we were at a different health system, I don't think there would be a lot, if any, evidence he actually did this because there was no record to look at during that time.
EDIT: I am not sure how they would have known to look, I don't recall telling anyone we were going anywhere with her, unless I mentioned possibly taking her to the ED when I left, but they weren't there at that specific time so I'm not sure how it even got to the point of this.
Do I have any legal options? My gut tells me unlikely, but this has made me deeply uncomfortable at work and I don't trust my employer will do anything to address this.
Thank you in advance for any advice or guidance.
EDIT: Confirmed specific date of the incident. It was last October.